And what it reveals about how companies develop skills
TOP PERFORMERS DO NOT LEARN LIKE EVERYONE ELSE
In many organizations, one observation keeps resurfacing: the highest-performing employees are not necessarily the ones consuming the most training content.
They sometimes attend fewer sessions and follow fewer formal learning paths. Yet they are often the people who adapt the fastest, progress the quickest, and develop the strongest capabilities.
This paradox reveals something important: the most effective learning does not always happen inside traditional training formats.
More often than not, it happens directly within the flow of work.
THE MOST POWERFUL LEARNING IS OFTEN INFORMAL
Top performers rarely learn passively, they improve by observing peers, solving complex problems, experimenting with new approaches, and receiving immediate feedback in real situations.
In other words, they primarily learn through experience.
This phenomenon is well documented in learning science. A large part of professional skill development happens through action and exposure to real-world situations rather than through purely formal learning environments.
Yet many organizations still structure learning around top-down content delivery: videos, e-learning modules, presentations, or standardized programs.
These formats can distribute knowledge effectively, but they struggle to reproduce the mechanisms that truly drive skill development.
THE GAP BETWEEN CONSUMING CONTENT AND BUILDING SKILLS
Understanding a concept does not necessarily mean knowing how to apply it.
An employee can complete extensive training on sales, customer service, or leadership while still feeling unprepared when confronted with complex real-world situations.
Because in actual work environments, decisions are made under uncertainty, with constraints, unexpected variables, and human dynamics that are difficult to replicate in theoretical content.
This is precisely where top performers differentiate themselves. They learn by experimenting, adjusting their approach, and gradually building operational judgment.
COMPANIES STILL UNDERVALUE OPERATIONAL KNOWLEDGE
This gap also highlights another issue: organizations often underuse their own internal expertise.
In many teams, the most valuable knowledge does not exist in training materials. It exists in the practices developed by operational experts — in the way they solve problems, navigate complexity, and make decisions in context.
But this knowledge often remains implicit, difficult to formalize, and poorly structured.
As a result, employees end up learning “on the job,” sometimes effectively, but inconsistently and at limited scale.
STRUCTURING REAL-WORLD LEARNING
The goal is not to oppose formal learning and informal learning.
It is to bring learning experiences closer to the actual mechanisms through which employees develop skills.
That means creating experiences rooted in day-to-day work: realistic scenarios, contextual decision-making, hands-on situations, and actionable feedback.
The objective is no longer simply to transfer information.
It is to help employees progressively build reflexes and capabilities they can immediately apply in their work.
A DIFFERENT APPROACH TO WORKPLACE LEARNING
This evolution is pushing organizations to rethink how learning is designed and delivered.
Increasingly, companies are exploring approaches that make learning more contextual, experiential, and directly connected to operational realities.
Rather than focusing exclusively on content consumption, these models aim to recreate the dynamics through which people naturally improve: practice, experimentation, iteration, and feedback.
THE COMPLEMENT APPROACH: STRUCTURING OPERATIONAL LEARNING
This is precisely the direction taken by Complement.
Instead of limiting learning to static content, the platform transforms operational expertise into adaptive and practice-based learning experiences. Employees engage with realistic situations directly connected to their work, where they are required to make decisions, test approaches, and refine their judgment.
This approach helps make implicit expertise more visible and transferable at scale, while preserving the complexity and richness of real-world contexts.
The objective is not simply to train employees.
It is to align learning with the way top performers already develop skills naturally: through action, experimentation, and continuous feedback.
RETHINKING WHAT LEARNING REALLY MEANS AT WORK
Organizations continue to invest heavily in training. But in an environment where skills evolve rapidly, the key question is no longer simply: “How do we distribute content?”
It is becoming: “How do we help employees improve in real situations?”
The companies that succeed in the coming years will likely be those capable of transforming learning into an active, contextual, and deeply operational experience.
- OECD – Skills for Jobs Report
- McKinsey – The State of Organizations 2023
- 70:20:10 Institute – Workplace Learning Research
- Kolb, D. – Experiential Learning Theory